Abstract

For nearly thirty years, nursing scholars have been concerned with the nature of the emerging discipline of nursing. Efforts have focused largely on defining and building a unique body of nursing knowledge. The discipline's theorists and researchers have been especially concerned that this body of knowledge be developed and tested scientifically so that it can serve as a valid basis for nursing practice. There seems to be a clear consensus among nursing scholars that improved nursing practice depends on advances in nursing science. Nursing science is advocated as providing the necessary foundation in which nursing practice should be based. This paper proposes an alternative, nonfoundational view of the relationship between nursing science and nursing practice. A nonfoundational perspective allows for a reconceptualization of nursing science and nursing practice as autonomous interpretive communities with their respective and unique goals, language, and methods. On this view, nursing science becomes its own form of practice whose consequences are internal to the nursing science community, and not foundational to nursing practice. The hermeneutical philosophy of Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish provides the framework to illustrate how members of the nursing science and nursing practice communities achieve their goals through interpretation, conversation, and persuasion. The analysis shows that a nonfoundational perspective offers enabling and enhancing opportunities for the respective domains of nursing science, nursing practice, and nursing education.